


The Other Vessel

by Louffox



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Claire POV, Claire is not all human, F/F, Femslash, Post Season 8, Slow Build, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-04
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-28 08:45:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/990034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Louffox/pseuds/Louffox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whatever happened to that sweet little girl, Claire Novak? Despite Jimmy's last wish, his family didn't escape the angels-demons wars. Any hope Claire had of living a normal life had been destroyed the very moment Castiel first contacted her father. And she's going to make him regret messing her up.</p><p>And who's this fierce little thing with dark hair, who knows all about hunting and the Winchesters and what's really happening to the world? Can she help Claire reclaim what's left of her humanity?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kill or be Killed

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a slow build, but it'll pick up quick, I pinkie swear.

            Before things ended, Claire Novak was many things, and there was a certain reliability for what she was. She was things, and she wasn’t things. There had never been any gray areas. Claire was quiet. Claire was thoughtful. She was nice, friendly, a good listener, wise beyond her years, charismatic, empathetic (almost unnervingly so), smart, gentle.

She was extraordinarily beautiful, though her features were simple and not exotic or entrancing. It was the kind of radiant attractiveness that comes from being comfortable in one’s own skin, taking care of herself but not trying to impress anyone. Her blonde hair was straight and silky, kept long with her bangs often pinned or braided back. Her skin was free of blemishes and she wore no makeup, save for a bit of mascara, maybe some powdered foundation if it was hot out and her face was shiny. She had a sort of perpetual rosiness to her cheeks, and her eyes were a clear, untainted crystalline blue. As a child she was adorable, as an adolescent she was pretty, as a teen she was gorgeous, as a young adult she was nothing short of beautiful. 

She was courageous and mostly fearless- in her biology class in school, she was unmoved by dissections, the blood and viscera not alarming her. She could catch a spider and release it outside while everyone else scrambled to get away from it. When she and a friend were in a car accident, she calmly checked on her friend, didn’t move her, checked on the other driver, and called 911. But all of her bravery was a kind of soft-spoken one. It wasn’t loud or brash, it would surface as needed.

She was dedicated. She devoted a very responsible amount of time to her schoolwork, always did homework first, fun later. She was smart enough that she didn’t really need to study, but did nonetheless. She wasn’t very athletic- competitive sports weren’t her forte, with her gentle, giving, doe-like mannerism. However, she did participate in cross country in the fall, and enjoyed running to keep her body healthy- after all, her body was a temple and it was her responsibility to take care of it.

Most of all, Claire was godly. She seemed to almost emit grace and love. She was never anyone’s best friend- she was too sweet and grounded to be one to gossip to, but she was everyone’s friend. There were a few who tried to resent her perfection, but she was unerringly kind, and they found it impossible to truly dislike her. She was trustworthy and careful- she would give people compliments and advice and criticism, but it was always so earnestly helpfully presented that people took them to heart and couldn’t be offended.

And then things ended.

Claire woke up shaking and choking around a lump in her throat, as she always did nowadays. She never cried- just trembled uncontrollably and paced a short beat across the floor, sweating and only half conscious. Sometimes she almost wished she did cry- the lump in her throat was annoying and painful, but she never could do anything about it.

Waking up was the worst part of her day. Ever since things ended, she’d been wrought with ghastly nightterrors. Not nightmares- she’d had those occasionally before things ended, she knew how to calm down after those. Night terrors were a different animal completely- she’d done her research. She could never remember the dream, and sometimes didn’t even remember waking up- just would eventually come to herself, finding that she was standing in the middle of the room or cave or clearing or wherever she was sleeping at the time, shaking and bathed in a cold sweat, mumbling and fearful of things that didn’t make sense. Sometimes she came to before they really ended and would pace, her depth perception a mess and the world shaking beneath her feet and hallucinatory numbers and stars and colors shivering violently around her, and everything was fearscape until it finally faded.

Her pacing slowed, and the trembling fear-adrenaline energy began to receed, until she could drop down to sit on the floor, rubbing her face. Breathe in. Breathe out. Six times, deep breath in, deep breath out. One more big breath, hold it- and let it go, along with everything else. Let it go.

She only ever allowed six breaths and one more of panic and self-pity and hatred, because if she didn’t put a firm lid on it, she would die.

Not be sad. Not struggle with life, or be unhappy. She would _die_.

Because black-and-white Claire was gone. No more friends and peaceful jogging and studying the anatomy of a frog or the practical applications of trigonometry. Now everything was painted in hues of gray.

Six breaths. One big breath. Time to start her day.

She’d camped out in an old to-be-demolished-if-anyone-gets-around-to-it house. It wasn’t one of those old ones that are condemned and beautiful and antique and covered in graceful cobwebs and old gold and crystal. It was a shithole. Not literally, of course- she’d found houses before that smelled like death and mouse poop and other worrying decay scents, and knew enough to pass those ones up. Her standards weren’t high, but sterility was one of the few things she wanted. Not just wanted, but needed. She knew that staying in a house full of mouse poop could make her sick (and if she couldn’t take care of herself, she was dead,) and a house that smelled like death could make her sick, and if there was any other animal poop then whatever already lived there would probably try to protect its territory. Not that she was scared of animals, after the things she’d seen- the _real_ scary things- but the less to worry about, the better.

So the house was flaky and full of spiders and beetles and smashed windows and gross spiderwebs and debris. The floor was broken in many places- the most intact place was just big enough for her sleeping bag. Good thing she was small.

No shower, no running water. Well, there was, but whether the rusty brown sludge that had crawled from the pipes could be called ‘water’ was still undecided. She made due with a jug of water, pouring some in her hands and rubbing her face. She’d showered last night when she’d gotten into town, faking her way into the busy gym (“I just left my car keys in there, can I go grab them? Hold on, I know my ID is here somewhere… Oh, alright, thanks, I’ll be just a minute.”) to use the showers in the locker room. She wasn’t too concerned- she wasn’t dressing up in a monkey suit and holding any interviews, so she didn’t have to look professional or anything. It was a library day, and maybe a little B&E.

The case was a weird one, but the tracks seemed pretty obvious. She wasn’t sure what she was up against, but it hadn’t been subtle- finding it would be easy, but figuring out how to kill it or how powerful it would be was going to be the tricky part. Hence, library day.

She dressed warmly, (southern Maine was much colder than Illinois) braided her hair back impatiently and packed up, going to her jeep parked in an alley beside the house. Once, going to the library would’ve been something to enjoy. Now the silence and soft sounds and smell of old things made her jittery.

Hours of research. Hooking her laptop up to the wifi, she went over and over what she knew, typing the information in different order, wording it differently, excluding and including details. No luck, so she hit the stacks- old mythology books, native American texts, historical references… not a lot of luck there, either.

She knew whatever it was had a fondness for women. There had been women going missing every Friday night for a whole month, one every Friday night, and after scanning old newspapers at the station yesterday (for more hours and hours) she’d found it happened about every year around springtime. The profile wasn’t uncommon- young, beautiful women, blue eyes, blonde hair. The pattern was peculiar, but that wasn’t what told Claire it was supernatural. It was the frogs. And the witness, of course.

There was a reptile and amphibian zoo in town. Weird. And every year, just before the disappearances, a bunch of toads disappeared. Were they stolen? Did the monster take them, then want women? Were the frogs somehow actually the same thing as the monster? Or were they fleeing before the monster, like spiders before a basilisk?

And the witness- a terrified woman who stumbled screaming into the hospital, saying she’d fallen in love and he’d raped her, alternating between swearing her love to him and saying he was an evil man. She said he was Satan- no, _literally_ , he was Satan. She said he had horns and a beard and hooves. Before police could find out where she was held, her heart had massive tachycardia and then stopped, and then she’d stopped.

So something with horns and hooves, something to do with frogs, liked women, and made them psychotic.

On a whim, Claire grabbed a German text (before things ended, she’d been in a highly accelerated program in school, and was fairly fluent in Latin, Hebrew, German, and French) to add to her pile. The woman had been a migrant from Germany. Maybe that had something to do with it.

Jackpot. Whim pays. She caught the word _unke_ and turned back to it, and read about something called a _Ziegevolk_ , a German seductive goat-man. Also known as Bluebeards, they secreted pheromones that made women crazy for them. And they ate toads to make it more potent. Perhaps the woman’s German upraising had given her some clues, enough to be able to get away. There was nothing in particular about how to kill them, so she would start with silver bullets, but bring her machete just in case.

She found the den without difficulty, after discovering the sewer route it had taken to steal the toads- it was in a boarded up house, everything completely sealed except a hole in the living room that she crawled up through, that connected to the sewers.

There were sounds upstairs. She pulled her gun from the waist of her pants and clicked the safety off, bending her knees slightly, getting ready. She went carefully up the stairs, staying against the wall to keep her steps from creaking, watching, ready, careful.

Noise behind her. She spun.

The Bluebeard (he did really look goat-like) was at the bottom of the stairs and it snarled up at her, before taking two quick steps and jumping down the hole. Claire swore, and took the steps in two bounds, hurtling down the hole after it, almost breaking her ankle.

Bluebeard was _fast_. She wasn’t much of a sprinter (though she could out-distance anything, given enough time) and the tunnel wasn’t that long before they’d come to a manhole. When he climbed the ladder, that would be her opportunity.

It was all too quick- he was already up the ladder and pushing the manhole away, moving up- he must’ve jumped all the way up the ladder, no way could he climb that fast- and he was going to get away, she launched herself at the ladder, trying to catch him, fumbling with holding the gun and the rungs-

And suddenly, he wasn’t getting away from her, he was _coming at her_. She had no time to even react before he crashed into her, knocking her down, sending her gun skittering across the damp, smelly floor.

They wrestled for a moment, and she tried to draw her machete, but he kicked her in the side and sent that away too. But now she was on her feet, between him and the exit.

He severely underestimated her, which he couldn’t really be blamed for. She was a tired-looking blonde woman, barely 21, short and dirty and human. And he was fast and strong and confident. He rushed her, snarling again.


	2. Symbiosis

He rushed her, snarling again.

130 pounds moving at about 15 mph concentrated on a point the size of a dime- her elbow. Plus the speed at which he was moving forward, because of the relativity of the motion, plus the small amount of speed in the short step she took forward summed up to an even extremely-crushed-chest.

There was an almost audible crunch as her elbow slammed into his sternum, directly between the ribs. The sternum was a relatively thin bone, and the tip could break off very easily. Even CPR could snap it. Beneath her elbow, it splintered, and all the air whooshed out of his lungs in one foul gasp, and then he was on the ground. She took a step back and looked at him to make sure he wasn’t getting up, then turned to get her gun to put him down.

“Nice.” She whirled, and saw a girl shimmying down the ladder with a wide smile. She had dark hair and large freckle under one eye, like one of those beauty marks the actresses of old painted on, and wore a flannel shirt and jeans. “You sure showed him. They teach you that in self defense or something?”

“Uh.” Claire had been determined and confident before- it was the hunt, it was the kill, it was her life now. Now she was unsteady, not sure what to say.

“Why don’t you get up to safety and I’ll just stay here and, uh… call the cops. Go back home, I’m sure your friends and family are worried. People are psychos, right? Just get on out of here,” the girl said with a smile.

“Are you a hunter?” Claire blurted out. It was the only thing that made sense- the girl had pushed him back down into the tunnel and was coming down after him. Who would do that, aside from a hunter?

“Oh thank God, yeah, I am. I didn’t think you were one- blonde, blue eyes, I thought you were a vic and I had no idea how to get you out of here and vanish him and myself before anything happened. I’m Krissy,” the girl said, laughing with relief.

“Uh… Claire,” she said hesitantly, still not quite trusting the dark haired girl. For some reason, she wasn’t as worried about the Ziegevolk as she was about the fact that she hadn’t showered since last night and had been crawling through sewer tunnels and abandoned houses all evening. To hide her embarrassment, she ducked to retrieve her machete and her gun.

“Pleasure to meet you. I didn’t realize another hunter had this one covered- I’d just been on my way to the reptile zoo thing and saw this ugly mug coming up, so I just kicked him back down again.”

“Thanks. He was getting away,” Claire admitted, cocking her gun and dispassionately putting a shot in the Bluebeard’s heart and a shot in his head. “Sorry that was loud. I’m not sure if that’ll kill him, I couldn’t find any lore on special methods to kill Ziegevolk.”

“No, they can be killed like humans, nothing special. Or, at least, that’s what Garth tells me,” Krissy said, blinking at the noise. “Do you know where the girls are?”

“There’s a house at the end of this tunnel. Who’s Garth?” she asked, dragging the body a ways away from the ladder, the opposite direction of the house so the girls wouldn’t have to see it if they had to lead them back this way.

“He’s the new Bobby. I’ll help get the girls out with you.”

“I don’t… who’s Bobby?” Claire asked, feeling lost.

“You never knew Bobby? Damn. He’s… well, he’s like… a secretary. No, not a secretary, god no. He’s like… home base. I don’t know. You call Bobby- Garth now, cause Bobby’s dead- so you call Garth, and he’ll point you to a case nearby, or he’ll look up information for you, or he’ll pretend to be your boss at the CIA or FBI or whatever if you need to go undercover and get questioned. He’s got a massive collection of old lore, and he’s read through so much of it and helped so many hunters that he’s the guy to ask, if you ever need anything. Just don’t ever drink with him,” Krissy added seriously as Claire started to lead the way to the house. “You must be a new hunter- but you fight really well.”

“I- yeah. I’ve only been hunting for about a year and a half,” Claire admitted.

“Wow, and you already fight like that? You took that thing down in one hit! Jeez, you’re sure somethin else.”

“I’m… uh… thanks,” Claire said, deciding to leave it at that.

Suddenly water splashed into the side of her face and she sputtered, drawing her gun and spinning. “What was that for?” she cried, scowling and wiping the water out of her ear, where it seemed most of it had gone.

“Just the normal checks. Wow, you really are a newbie. Holy water, had to check, especially with you being that good of a fighter. Gimmie your hand,” Krissy demanded.

“Why?!”

“Because I need to cut you with a silver knife to make sure you aren’t a shapeshifter or a werewolf or anything weird. And I want to see your gums, to make sure you aren’t a vampire. And if you heal, to see if you’re an angel.”

Claire visibly flinched at the last addition to the list. “I’m not any of those things,” she snapped, but held out her hand anyways. Krissy pressed the knife against the back of her hand and slid it a centimeter- no need it giving her any big cuts, like so many hunters she knew did. Claire wasn’t hissing or spitting or steaming, so that was good. Her blood was red- not a leviathan. And it didn’t just seal up and vanish, so she wasn’t an angel.

“Got any STD’s?” Krissy asked.

“What? No! Why is that a question?” Claire snorted.

“Sharing knives. I’m clean too, in case you’re curious. And holy water,” she said, cutting her own hand and taking a swig of the holy water. “And I pinkie promise I ain’t no angel,” she laughed.

“Good.”

“How come you hunt but you don’t know any of this?” Krissy asked. “Nobody taught you?”

“I’m kind of self-taught,” she said, a half truth, pulling her sleeves down over her hands.

“How does that work?”

“How come you’re so curious?” Claire said tiredly, climbing up into the living room of the abandoned house.

“How come you’re so evasive?” Krissy shot back. They stopped talking when they got upstairs, and began picking the locks to the cages the girls were in, speaking soothing words to them, reassuring them that they were getting out.

Krissy kicked the boarded up front door down, and they led the girls out, telling them to go right to the hospital and stay together. They did not accompany them.

“You got a car?” Krissy asked Claire as they parted from the victims.

“A Jeep. Do you?”

“I’ve got a piece of shit scrapper I salvaged. Can we team up?” Krissy asked casually.

“I don’t know,” Claire said sharply.

“You don’t know anything. You don’t know Bobby, you don’t know Garth, you don’t know how to check people- I bet you don’t even have an antipossession tattoo,” Krissy scoffed. “It’s amazing you aren’t dead already. And teams work so much better, trust me.”

“I’ve never worked in a team.”

“Well, I did, until they hooked up and I was a forever-third-wheel and left, I’ve been looking for one and you need one. We can help each other.”

“Symbiosis,” Claire said thoughtfully, leading the way back to her jeep. “Maybe we can try it. But I reserve the right to disband it at any time.”

“Sure thing. You wanna write out a contract or something?” Krissy snorted at her formality.

“Maybe,” Claire said, allowing a small laugh. It had been a while since she’d laughed for honest, not just pretending while acting as a fed or something- it felt strange in her mouth.


	3. Sushi and Whiskey

“So I think our first act of teaming up is to find a shower and get some supper,” Krissy declared.

“What about the _Ziegevolk_? His corpse is still in the tunnel,” Claire reminded her.

“What, you wanna drag that up in the middle of daylight? In the middle of town? I say we leave it, it’ll decompose pretty quick down there. And if someone finds it, we’ll be long gone.”

“If you’re sure,” Claire shrugged. She didn’t particularly want to go back down in the sewer.

“Do you have a motel room, or have you been staying in your car?”

 _Do I look like I’ve been staying in my car?_ Claire thought worriedly. She proceeded to worry about why she was worrying. “Um, neither. I’m… I’m squatting. Old house on Elm street,” she explained as they arrived at her car, parallel parked a little ways down the street. She took off her belt and machete before climbing in and turning the ignition. Krissy hopped in the passenger seat.

“Cool. I’ve got a hotel room, we can swing by Elm if you’ve still got stuff there and then go to the motel to wash up. Squatting is nothing new to me, I know there probably isn’t running water, but I recently ‘inherited’ a good amount of money, so hotels it is. Know any good places to eat in this town?”

“I packed everything up when I left this morning, we can go straight to the hotel. There’s a Chinese place I saw this afternoon, it said half off ala carte today,” she suggested.

“Score.”

Krissy directed her to the hotel and she parked and stood nervously with her duffel while the dark haired girl unlocked the door. It felt odd to be honestly social, not just because she needed to question people. And associating with another hunter, she’d only done that a few times, briefly.

“You can take the shower first,” Krissy said, pointing her toward the bathroom.

“Thanks,” Claire said, turning, and whipping back around to face the other way when she saw Krissy had shucked her flannel and was peeling her shirt off, revealing a sports bra and flat stomach.

Claire hurriedly made her way to the bathroom, blushing and unsure why.

She showered quickly, not wanting to make Krissy wait, and emerged feeling much cleaner and less self-conscious. She dressed in one of her few halfway nice jeans that she tried not to wear on hunts, and a purple long-sleeve henley. Krissy had put on a big t-shirt and some kind of boxer shorts. Her legs looked strong and sculpted, and Claire blinked at so much skin.

“I’ll be quick- I’m starving,” she said, getting up and going to the bathroom. Claire nodded and walked over to her duffel, forcing herself not to watch her walk by.

Claire didn’t braid her hair, leaving it down to dry wavy, and even put earrings in and a quick swipe of mascara on, enjoying feeling clean and somewhat social for a change.

“Well, don’t you look pretty. Nice change, from hunter to prep in half an hour,” Krissy observed, emerging from the bathroom in just a towel to collect clothes from her own bag.

“I’m not sure if I should thank you or be offended,” Claire said with a smile, turning and pretending to arrange her duffel to let Krissy get dressed. She wore a plain blue t-shirt with navy flannel and jeans.

“Maybe a little of both. You think you could braid my hair? Yours looked really nice earlier, and I’m awful at braiding,” she requested, sounding nervous.

“Sure.” Her mother had taught her how to braid, and before her cross country races, she often braided all the girls’ hair. “Sit down, you’re a bit taller than me.” Krissy sat on the edge of the bed and Claire kneeled behind her, gently separating her hair into strands and beginning a fairly simple French braid, fingers flying expertly. “Do you have an elastic?”

Krissy passed her one, and she secured it at the nape of her neck. As an afterthought, she separated it again and flipped the tie inside-out so it ended in a fancy looking knot.

“Wow, you’re really good at that! Thanks!” Krissy laughed, looking at her reflection. She flipped the light switch. “Let’s get going before I get hangry.”

“Hangry?”

“It’s when you’re hungry and it makes you grumpy. Angry-hungry. Hangry,” she explained when they got in the jeep.

“Oh,” Claire laughed, knowing what she was talking about. Her dad used to-

She stopped the thought there and put her jeep in drive.

><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< 

“You like sushi and you can braid, who are you?” Krissy laughed rambunctiously as they got back to the jeep. “What kind of hunter likes sushi and can braid? And what kind of girl can take down a bluebeard with one hit? Like… what the hell? Do you even own any flannel?” she cackled.

She was a little drunk.

Claire had only a small mixer, claiming that she was driving and was a lightweight. After Krissy offered to take the check and flashed a wallet full of credit and debit cards, Claire partly wished she had drank.

“ _And_ ,” she said with great gravity, “you don’t have an antipossession tattoo. How are you not demon lunch? We’ll get you a tattoo. First thing tomorrow. I actually know the guys who first came up with the idea of that, instead of hex bags. They’re the best hunters in the U.S. They keep fucking up my life,” she snorted as Claire listened, amused. “Goddamn Winchesters.”

Claire’s foot slipped off the gas for a second and her hands clenched around the steering wheel.

“Course, I’d probably be dead without them- my Dad was a hunter and he went missing, they found him- but he died eventually anyways. Bought me some more time with him, though. And then I was happy, settled into a house and killing bad shit, and they came along again and trashed everything. And Dean tried to help this guy hook up with me, can you believe it? So awkward. Sucks enough to tell someone to give up, sucks even more when he didn’t know I’m queer.”

Claire’s foot slipped again, and Krissy laughed.

“Sorry, guess you didn’t know either. You sure are a lightweight, you didn’t drink shit. Your driving sucks.”

“Sorry. What are they up to nowadays, the Winchesters?” she asked casually.

“No clue. Rumor says they’ve got some bat cave or something, one hell of a base. They’ve been running around collecting angels. You know about that whole cluster fuck?”

Claire did- she’d waken up in the middle of the night to the most awful screaming, and when she’d realized nobody else could hear it, some intrinsic part of her knew exactly what had happened, but not how or why.

“No, nothing,” she said as she parked and turned the jeep off.

“You know about the angel that hangs out with the Winchesters? Castiel?”

Claire had been bracing herself for it, she knew he had something to do with it, so she didn’t flinch. “No, but go on.”

“Well, the three got hold of some ancient tablets. The word of God, apparently. One of them was about demons, and Sam and Dean got it translated and found out how to shut Hell for good. But they had to do these trials to do it, and Sam tried, and they were going to kill him so they had to stop halfway through the last trial. And this Castiel, he got the one about angels, and he and this other angel, the one who wrote the tablets, they set out to do something to do with Heaven, different trials. I don’t know what Castiel thought they were doing, but what happened wasn’t what he’d planned.

“The writer angel cut out his grace- that’s what an angel’s power is called- and finished the last trial for Heaven, and all the angels fell out of the sky. Wham, human. Last I heard- this was a few months ago- they were trying to round up the angels and get them safe and settled in as humans. Word went out for all hunters to look for them and to look for anything that could help get them back angel’d up. Garth says that Sam is _still_ recovering from the trials. And I can’t find the room key,” she finished, fumbling through her pockets.

“You gave it to me earlier,” Claire reminded her, stepping forward and unlocking the door. Krissy all but fell inside.

“Have you ever met an angel?” Krissy asked. “I haven’t.”

“Yes, once,” Claire said, and her tone was cold enough that even in her drunken state, Krissy didn’t prod.

“Oh, cool. I’m beat,” she said, yawning massively. “Bed?”

“I’ve got a sleeping bag,” Claire said quickly.

“Screw that, when’s the last time you slept in a bed? We can share. It’s just us girls here,” she laughed. “I’ll even sleep with pajamas on.”

“If you insist.” Claire stepped into the bathroom to change, and Krissy again changed in the open without shame. When Claire came out, Krissy was already tucked into the bed. Claire gingerly crawled on top of the duvet and lay down.

“Hey, no. It’s cold. Get in, don’t be stupid,” the dark haired girl groaned dramatically, making her newfound teammate smile and slip into the sheets, though careful to leave lots of space between them, and reached up to turn off the light.

She lay there for a long time, silently waiting to fall asleep.

When she woke, she slipped into consciousness peacefully and stretched her arms above her head before sitting up. No night terrors, that was a neat change. Krissy was still asleep beside her, and she carefully slid out of the bed. She was still deeply asleep, so Claire decided to go get some breakfast before she woke. She jotted a quick note on the hotel notepad, dressed, and left.

Krissy was just waking up when she returned, sitting on the side of the bed with her head upside-down between her knees, scratching her scalp with both hands.

“Ugh. I’m born-and-bred a beer and whisky girl, don’t let me drink vodka _ever_ again,” she grumbled, sitting up and pushing her hair out of her face. “Oh god. _Breakfast_ ,” she cooed, jumping up. Claire passed her a brown paper bag and a foam cup with a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a filler chapter, apologies. But it's gonna speed up real quick- big things coming, I promise!

**Author's Note:**

> You know what really makes me review quickly? A kudos or a comment! Taking the two seconds to click kudos helps me see that people are actually reading this, and if I think people are reading this, then I'll update WAY more rapidly. Seriously, it takes just a second. Please?


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